Saturday, January 15, 2011

DES MOINES REGISTER - BLOCK THE FILIBUSTER

Filibuster should no longer rule Senate

The Register's editorial • January 14, 2011


In a democracy, majority rules. There is one notable exception: The United States Senate, where the minority rules by using the filibuster. It is time that majority rule got more respect there.

Because it takes 60 votes to end a filibuster, 41 senators can block virtually any bill. And, because Senate action on House bills is stymied as well, and confirmation of appointments to the executive branch and to the federal courts are too frequently blocked, all three branches of the government are unable to properly perform the people's business.

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This cannot be the intent of the framers of the Constitution. It is long past time for the Senate to return to using the filibuster rule sparingly, modify the rule or eliminate it altogether.

In virtually every other legislative or judicial body - whether it be the City Council in Waterloo, Ia., or the U.S. Supreme Court - the vote of a simple majority of the membership carries the day. Exceptions prove the rule: A super majority is required for Senate ratification of a treaty, for example, and a bond election in Iowa requires 60 percent voter approval. Otherwise, 50 percent plus one is sufficient.
The Senate as established in Article I of the U.S. Constitution was designed to make decisions with a simple vote of the majority, according to Yale constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar and former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart writing in the online magazine Slate. "Several of the Constitution's provisions prescribing super majorities make little sense unless we assume that majority rule was the self-evident default rule," they wrote. "Thus, Article I presupposed that each house would pass bills by majority vote - except when trying to override presidential vetoes, which would require a special super majority."
Both parties have been frustrated by the filibuster when each was blocked by the party in the minority. Senate Democrats are fuming about filibusters today, when they have a slight majority. Yet the shoe was on the other foot in 2005 when Democrats used the filibuster to block judicial appointments.

The Senate is a small and privileged body steeped in rich tradition. It is not likely to do away with two centuries of senatorial courtesy. The idea that any one of 100 senators is just as important as the other 99 is a powerful tradition. That tradition allows a senator to be heard, as long as he or she wants, to slow down the process and to have a contrary view fully aired. In the past, that tradition was the exception. Today it is the rule, and the Senate has been transformed from the world's greatest deliberative body to the world's most ineffective body.

REHKA BASU'S EHIOPIAN DIARY -- DAY XIV

Sept. 16, Addis Ababa

My final day in Ethiopia brought more tales of struggle and hardship, juxtaposed with stories of heroism by workers on the front lines.
There's a severe shortage of doctors in this country. The ratio is 1 doctor to more than 30,000 people. Part of that is due to a brain drain to the West, where they can earn a lot more than the $150 a month they'd make here.
So when you meet one who has chosen to stay, to try to make a difference, in spite of the low pay and the lack of supplies, it reinforces your faith in what is possible. At the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital today, I met a doctor whose work among the most outcast of women is a true labor of love.
His is just one of the many stories I heard and saw throughout the country, of people trying to be change agents in a country that needs to learn to embrace change while maintaining its rich heritage. There was the deacon who had a vasectomy and now uses himself as a model to urge parishioners to do the same. There are the women who were married as children but will not subject their daughters to the same form of abuse, or allow their bodies to be mutilated in the name of "culture." There are, simply, the husbands and wives learning that more children does not mean more wealth but greater tragedy.
The slow pace of change has its good and bad sides. Ultimately, you have to learn that unless you adapt to life's new realities, you won't make it.
Ethiopia has captured my heart at a turning point in my life. In all the paradoxes of this beautiful, invigorating and heartbreaking country, I learned this: Life is full of sorrow, yes, but also unexpected joys and opportunities -- if you're open to seeing them.

REHKA BASU'S EHIOPIAN DIARY -- DAY IX

Sept. 15, Addis Ababa

Back in the capital. Returning from the country to a big city is the same experience everywhere. You go from wide-open spaces, relaxed and intimate atmospheres to the fast-paced, smoggy, traffic-choked center, where poverty always seems more oppressive. The dust particles in Addis settle in your nose and throat.
But the city offers a more rapid pulse, excitement and variety of every kind. A universal trade-off.
We visited the Ethiopian minister of health for a briefing, and the U.S. Agency for International Development office for a meeting with U.S. officials that was at first billed as off-the-record, then afterward as on-the-record, and then in a subsequent letter, off-the-record again. So I'm afraid I can't share what was said. But it involved U.S. policy toward aid for Africa and the initiatives and conditions attached.
In the afternoon, got a fascinating briefing on how the government's attempts to liberalize Ethiopia's restrictive abortion law were scuttled by anti-choice activists (see abortion column).
An evening reception at a restaurant featured key players in health and women's rights. So as a popular band belted out lively tunes, and dancers took to the floor in a blaze of rhythm and color, I talked to a woman who tries to help prostitutes out of the profession, and a man working to fight harmful traditional practices. Most of those have their worst impact on women, says Abebe Kebede, who's with the National Committee on Harmful Traditional Practices of Ethiopia. He says people ask him why, as a man, he cares about these issues, and he says it's because of his mother, who struggled a lot and whom he loved very much. "My father was not a good person," he said.
He believes being a change agent begins in your own household. So in his family, he does the major cooking and shopping and child care while his wife runs a business. He also gives his staff three months of paid leave both before and after the birth of a child. He sees it not as a favor but as a right.
"You can't be superficial about this issue," he said. "You have to try to be an exemplary person so that other people follow you." Amen.

REHKA BASU'S EHIOPIAN DIARY -- DAY XIII

Sept. 14, Dessie, Debresina, Debre Berhan

Today would have been my 21st wedding anniversary. Last year at this time, Rob and I were celebrating our 20th in Sicily. It's painful, but I'm glad I'm here.
I awoke this morning at 4 a.m., then again at 5 to the sound of a crackling call to prayers over a muffly loudspeaker from a local mosque.
Breakfast was a crispy fried flat bread with honey. In the car four of us chewed the khat I bought the previous day for birr 10 ($1.25) through the car window from a young man.
The June 7 Des Moines Register had an article about khat being the newest "illegal street drug" in the Des Moines area, introduced by Somali refugees who had it shipped over. Two area men had been arrested, and 136 pounds of khat seized.
When I told Ethiopians here it had been described as a controlled narcotic substance like meth, and that people were prosecuted for it, they laughed. Here, chewing khat is about as controversial as drinking beer. It's one of Ethiopia's top exports. It's sold to Britain, Somalia and Yemen, but the United States won't allow it in. Sales are taxed. In fact, I'm told, many farmers have switched from growing coffee to khat because it's easier to cultivate and more cost-effective since the world market for coffee has slumped.
It's supposed to make you mentally alert and upbeat. People typically chew it socially, during four or five hours on a Sunday, in a living room over coffee and snacks. Conversations become intensified, they say. College students use it to stay up and study.
Though there are no known harmful effects, a government publicity campaign warns against overdoing it when the time used to chew khat could be used more productively. But that leaves the government in a bit of a quandary --knowing it's good for the economy, but not wanting to be pushing a drug.
Khat is horrendously bitter, so you eat it with sugar, which someone conveniently supplied from a small newspaper envelope in his pocket. You're supposed to chew it for a long time and not swallow, but I had a hard time keeping it in my mouth.
For all that effort, it had no discernible effect on me.

REHKA BASU'S EHIOPIAN DIARY -- DAY VII

Sept. 13, Woldia to Hayk

I was spared any bug bites last night. But we are traveling in a high-malaria area, so I'm grateful for the malarone pills I brought, which have to be taken daily, despite the side effects. Not only do they make you a little nauseated, but they are said to induce bizarre and frightening dreams. Our group has shared some interesting stories about that.
Today we traveled from Woldia to Hayk, where we visited a rural outreach center, set in the foothills, framed by tall trees and low-lying cactuses. We had to walk a bit to get to the place, which is set deep inside the vegetation. Because the rain had deposited large mud puddles, that meant balancing on narrow, makeshift wooden planks. A few in our group were regretting the high heels they'd worn, but for once I'd made the sensible choice in shoes. If you were losing your balance, and reached out to grab something, you came up clutching cactus needles, which stung a few in our group quite badly.
Outside the center, I had a frank conversation with a group of village women who were sitting on the ground waiting to get birth control. All had been subjected to ritual clitoridectomies as babies, typically 40 days after birth. By most accounts, three-fourths or more of Ethiopian women have undergone it.
Most had also had it done to their daughters, but say they would not again. They said sex isn't pleasurable for them -- it's just for men's sake -- but not only because of how their bodies have been altered. The lifestyle and long hours of work don't allow it. And after visiting a house where parents and five children share a bedroom, I can see the obstacles. That also answered my questions about why certain types of birth control, namely long-term methods, are preferable here to diaphragms and pills, which just aren't practical.
Given all this, I was surprised to learn it's common in this community for women and men to have multiple sex partners after marriage. All these women admitted to having done so. But the AIDS epidemic is slowly changing that. A network of community outreach workers in this village has helped raise awareness about the risks of HIV-transmission, female genital cutting and child marriage, and the benefits of family planning.
I also met today with a chapter of the Ethiopian Women's Lawyers Association, which addresses such social ills as child marriage, female genital mutilation and domestic violence by filing court cases. Though genital mutilation is illegal, members haven't prosecuted any cases of it because no one reports it. But this year they handled 94 domestic-violence cases. Most were settled by mediation, but 15 were prosecuted and the majority convicted.
Sometimes the association gets visits from girls who have learned their parents are planning to marry them off as children. It calls police, subpoenas the parents and tells them child marriage is against the law and they could be prosecuted if they proceed.
In school, girls are learning they have options. Unfortunately, few girls are in school past the elementary grades.
Drove to the bustling town of Dessie for the night.

REHKA BASU'S EHIOPIAN DIARY -- DAY VI

Sept. 12, Lalibela to Woldia

Visited the government-funded Lalibela Hospital in the morning, where two doctors and seven nurses serve 25,000 people. Because of the lack of professional staff, they train community-based leaders to go out and provide some services. Those workers report back on rapes and domestic-violence cases. Some women have to come covertly to get birth control because their husbands disapprove. But some men will come in for vasectomies after having six or seven children. Some women come in after trying to abort by using roots inserted into their vaginas. Many 15- and 16-year-olds come in to give birth. Some come with obstetric fistula. They believe it has a spiritual cause rather than a physical one related to labor and delivery. Patients travel by foot up to 75 miles to get there.
I walked past old metal-rail beds in a tuberculosis ward, and had a tinge of anxiety about catching it. But I was assured that by the time patients are admitted, it's no longer contagious.
I saw a woman with a 1-year-old baby who was sick from pneumonia and malnutrition. Those are the leading causes of infant deaths. I heard some heartbreaking stories, including one from a woman who gave birth to six children and lost four to malnutrition. "If I have the capacity, I will send my child to school, so he will not be illiterate like me," she told me.
And then there was Mengistu, an adorable boy of about 12 whose father brought him to the hospital two years ago for diabetes treatment and never returned for him. So the hospital is raising him and sending him to school. About 17 children are living there under similar circumstances. Sometimes foreigners come through and decide to adopt them.
Drove in vans to Woldia, along winding mountain roads with steep cliffs, verdant green hills dotted with tall, spiny eucalyptus trees, fan-like banana, papaya and umbrella-shaped trees and cactus. Rode past wheat and corn crops and rock-terraced hills. Stopped to watch a fleet of monkeys and baboons racing down the hill. Saw children who looked as young as 5 herding sheep, goats, cows and donkeys. Looked down into the valley to see travelers on foot heading up mountain roads with their possessions tied in bundles on the ends of sticks carried on shoulders.
Wherever we passed kids, they stopped what they were doing to wave at us, some running down hills, smiling broadly. We passed some of the most breathtaking scenery I've ever seen, and I marveled, once again, at how much beauty and joy there is despite the hardships. After dinner, I had an interview with a remarkable 16-year-old sex worker in town (to be published in an upcoming column).
Lal Hotel, where we're staying tonight, is a little creepy and dirty. I'm sitting on the bed under a mosquito net, but most of the bugs seem to be inside it rather than outside. One person in our group, fearful of bedbugs, personally sewed and brought her own bedroll. Another plans to sleep on top of her bed cover. I'm just taking my chances.

REHKA BASU'S EHIOPIAN DIARY -- DAY V

Sept. 11, Lalibela

Flew early this morning through a downpour into this rugged mountain village in the north, which is nearly 8,000 feet high and pretty inaccessible by road. Some people were feeling the altitude in dizziness and headaches. After a sleepless night and a wandering mind, I suffered a bit of an emotional meltdown, but regained my composure on the flight.
It's warm and sunny here, and the drive into town was stunning -- steep green hills, dramatic craggy rock formations and breathtaking drops over picturesque valley towns. The houses are circular and made of thatch.
Lalibela is known for its amazing 800-year-old rock-hewn churches carved into the ground from a single stone. It has a medieval appearance. There are little hermit holes carved into the rocks, where traces of clothing indicate people sleep in them. At one church, we saw a 500-year-old set of mummified remains.
I asked a priest, through an interpreter, about child marriage, which is prevalent here, and he said it was fine with him if kids marry as young as age 8 or 10, as long as their parents approve.
Priests are important here. There are 500 of them to about 25,000 people.
Hotel Jerusalem, where we're staying, is a simple place with a rustic charm. One circular thatched-roof building serves as the dining hall. A few benches and chairs under an awning outdoors became the bar where we gathered in the evening for drinks. The bedrooms, in a separate, long, low building, are modestly furnished but have little balconies with beautiful views over the wooded hillsides.
A special treat was seeing priests in long white robes and turbans come out to dance and drum in a procession in town in celebration of the new year. A lively group of teenagers gathered around us to chat, and I found myself doing a double take when I noticed a boy next to me was wearing an "Iowa Slipknot" T-shirt. Thousands of miles from Iowa, and about as far away as you could get psychically, there was a link to home. The kid said a visitor had left it there.
We had a briefing from EngenderHealth's Ethiopia office, and learned of, among other things, the huge numbers of Ethiopians who are living with HIV/AIDS and the fraction of the population using contraception. Only about a third of women can read and write, and 80 percent have no exposure whatsoever to mass media. No TV, newspapers, ads, or radios.
In the evening, we ate a sumptuous Ethiopian buffet and laughed and shared stories as a group.
Rural life in the developing world has a calming but energizing effect on me. There's just something about life pared down to its essentials, far from the urban rat race, smog and culture of materialism.

REHKA BASU'S EHIOPIAN DIARY -- DAYS III & IV

Sept. 10-11, after midnight, Addis Ababa

As America approaches a painful anniversary, people here are getting ready to celebrate. In Ethiopia, Sept. 11 is New Year's Day. The Julian calendar is used here. A year is 13 months, so Ethiopia is seven years "behind" the rest of the world. It's about to welcome in 1999.
Everyone is wishing each other a happy new year and feeling festive and hopeful about new beginnings. But it's an odd irony, this date. An Ethiopian man who lived in the United States told me that for five years, the Ethiopians there haven't felt right celebrating their new year.
Here, New Year's Eve is observed with lively parties, dancing and fireworks. I have to get up at 4:30 a.m. to catch a flight north, so I've opted for bed. But the drumming and music and fireworks continue loudly through the night, so there is no sleep.
The Americans I'll be traveling with from here on arrived today. There are journalists, family-planning advocates and policy strategists and Ethiopian interpreters. We were briefed at a reception this evening in a restaurant set high above the city, with a stunning view. Heard about the high infant mortality and maternal death rates, the economy, the decimation of the environment, the AIDS epidemic and the backward slide in family planning. With an average of 5.2 kids per family, it's hard for families to climb out of poverty, but family planning has taken a back seat in recent years to AIDS-fighting efforts. As for education, there may be 80 to 120 kids in a classroom. Even by Africa's low educational standards, one speaker said, Ethiopia's schools are among the worst.
Earlier, visited the Addis Ababa Museum, a rather listless place heavy on old photos uninspiringly arranged. Next door was a more lively trade show, where people shopped for household goods, toiletries, clothes, honey and everything else conceivable as loud, lively Ethiopian music blared from stereos.

REHKA BASU'S EHIOPIAN DIARY -- DAY II

Sept. 9, Addis Ababa

Winter is winding done here. It's a chilly 57 degrees.
Today is Saturday, and the university is closed, so I hired a car and driver for three hours and went into the Mercato, the largest open-air marketplace in Africa. I was warned not to go as a woman alone, so I took the driver along. It was the last shopping day before a national holiday, and the place was jammed. Saw a young boy carrying a baby goat around his neck, a woman clutching five live chickens by their feet in her two hands. Passed a pungently scented section of spices, and saw street vendors squatting and selling "chat," or "khat," a legal intoxicant used widely here and in the Middle East. It comes in bundles of fresh green leaves on a stem, wrapped in larger banana leaves.
Shopping for jewelry, scarves, baskets and knickknacks, I quickly spent $120, then realized with horror that that's close to the average per-capita income in Ethiopia. And again I was reminded of how spoiled I am and how much I take for granted.
Even in the press of humanity, I found people friendly and decent. There was little hassling and few rude comments from men (Ethiopian men are generally shy, I'm told), but there was one very pushy middleman in the covered market who kept trying to force us into his shops, and even seemed to intimidate my driver.
I saw limbless beggars, children hawking things through the car window, people sleeping in the street. Yet for all the struggle and sadness, somehow the place manages to maintain an aura of festivity and aliveness.
My driver supports the Iraq war against what he says is the growing threat of Muslim fundamentalism. He even thinks the United States should take on Iran. That's a very different take from what I've heard elsewhere, both in Ethiopia and in other countries around the world. Ethiopia is predominantly Orthodox Christian and Muslim. The two seem to live in relative harmony.
Struggled in the evening with whether to go to a restaurant by myself or stay in and order room service, and opted to be adventurous. Asked around, got a name and took a cab. The driver took me to a remote, unlit, rut-filled dirt road beyond the railroad tracks, and just as I was getting nervous, we arrived at Agelgil, a popular nightspot. The restaurant had a thatched roof and wooden floor, and a bar that led into the dining room. One wall was adorned with animal skins. At the front of the room was a stage, where two musicians fingered stringed instruments and two others worked their strings with reeds. To the right of the room, a flutist sat on a rock in an alcove decorated like a rock garden. Once again, I was immediately glad I'd come. The atmosphere was relaxed and welcoming.
Male and female dancers in a multitude of costume changes thumped their feet and shivered their shoulders seductively, approached diners' tables, making eye contact and inviting participation. I smiled but kept sitting.
The food arrived in a large round basket. A spongy flat bread called Injera was dotted with meat and vegetables. Afterward, the fresh roasting coffee was brought around to be sniffed. I'm not a coffee drinker, but this trip is converting me.
Spent some time chatting with the beautiful female manager about a universal topic -- men problems.

REHKA BASU'S EHIOPIAN DIARY

Sept. 8, Addis Ababa

Traveled 25 hours, via Detroit, Amsterdam and Khartoum, to arrive in Ethiopia's capital around 10 p.m. My suitcase came late, so I was one of the last to leave, and noticed I was also one of the only women alone or not being greeted by family. In the tension and exhaustion, I had a moment of self-doubt, wondering exactly what I'd been thinking, putting myself through this arduous journey with no familiar face to await me at the other end. But the suitcase came, and I stepped outside to see my name on a card being held by a very pleasant man from a conference planning agency. And there was familiarity in the smoky air outside, which reminded me of my birthplace, New Delhi.
On hearing it was my first visit, Getachen, my greeter, assured me I was in for the time of my life.
I hadn't journeyed to Africa looking to have the time of my life. Newly widowed, I'd come to heal, with paradoxical goals of getting away from my life and getting in touch with myself. Some of this would be accomplished, I hoped, by immersing myself in the lives and challenges of Ethiopia's women.
In a few days, I'll hook up with an organization called EngenderHealth, which supports women's reproductive health projects here. With them as guides, I and a handful of other delegates from the United States will go into some of the most tradition-bound areas in the northern highlands to visit clinics and talk to clients and try to get a handle on our role as Americans in supporting them.
Getachen gave me a mini tour of the area I'd be staying in, so I could plan my next day's wanderings. My big dilemma was whether to visit the university, where I had some introductions from friends in Des Moines, or check out Africa's largest open-air market.
Turns out I didn't have to make that choice. I slept 18 hours, until close to 6 p.m. the next day! People knocked on the door several times, and I greeted them. I awoke once to a shrieking from beyond the heavily wooded balcony outside my Hilton Hotel room -- a monkey or hyena? -- but fell back to sleep, feeling drugged. I unpacked to discover I'd inadvertently disobeyed U.S. security regulations by carrying liquids in my carry-on -- shampoo, face wash, conditioner. I'd heard the announcements and seen the signs, but in making a last-minute switch of carry-on bags, never noticed the offending items that stayed inside.
So much for tight security.
My room is a long outdoor walk from the hotel lobby to a new wing. In the main lobby, a woman in traditional dress sits close to the ground and roasts fresh coffee beans. You sit in low wooden stools to take in the aroma and drink the strong, espresso-like brew in the land where coffee was discovered.
The TV here carries Al-Jazeera but not in English. Most of my dollars can't be exchanged at either of the two banks in the hotel because they were printed in 1996, which in Ethiopia is an easy year to counterfeit.

When banks raise your fees - pull your damn money OUT of them and tell them to f#ck off ... it's YOUR money

January 14, 2011

As Banks Raise Fees, You Have Options

So now we know what the big banks’ New Year’s resolution was: Keep the profits flowing from basic checking accounts.
Earlier this month, Bank of America announced its intent to test a number of different monthly fees for customers in some states, depending on the balance in their accounts or other relationships with the institution.
Right before the new year, meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase informed customers that under certain circumstances it would add monthly fees to many of the accounts it inherited from the now-deceased Washington Mutual.
This must feel awfully good for the veteran branch banking executives at Chase who looked stingy by comparison when WaMu ran ads all over the United States in the 1990s and 2000s telling consumers that free checking was a basic human right.
But Chase sure doesn’t sound happy. In a remarkable display of staying on message, it gave the same comment last week when The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money and the trade publication US Banker asked it to explain the reasoning for the new monthly fees.
“We don’t want to raise fees on our customers,” a company spokesman said. “But unfortunately, regulation is forcing us to do it. And as a result, some customers may end up unbanked.”
This statement is striking for a number of reasons, and the eye-popping earnings the bank announced on Friday don’t exactly make the company more worthy of sympathy. So I’ve spent the last week trying to figure out why I was so sure I did not believe it the instant I read it.
So let’s take it apart, shall we?
First of all, Chase does want to raise fees on customers. It’s not the only bank that wants to, and this is a fine thing if you are a shareholder. After all, any business ought to strive to produce a product or offer a service that is so good or necessary that customers will keep on using it even after a price increase.
What companies don’t want to do is raise fees so much that they attract the attention of regulators or people who do what I do for a living. Yet this is exactly what the banks have done in the last decade.
First, they raised overdraft fees until the fees were often many times higher than the amount of the actual transaction that pushed the account balance below zero. At the same time, the banks and their partners at Visa and MasterCard forced merchants to pay ever more for the privilege of accepting these cards.
Eventually, consumers and merchants howled loud enough in protest that we ended up with overdraft fee regulation. There is also a Federal Reserve proposal percolating that may allow merchants to pay big banks much less when they accept those banks’ debit cards.
And so we arrive at Part 2 of Chase’s statement: regulators are making the bank raise prices. Um, no. Regulators are making it lower prices, or at least make fees more transparent.
All actors in this play do have the ability to improvise. And some of the big banks relied heavily on overdraft fees to hit whatever internal goals they set for themselves in their branch banking units. Chase, for instance, estimated that the overdraft legislation would cost it about $700 million a year. It’s also worried sick about the possibility of earning much less from merchant fees.
Chase and similar banks have to make that up somehow. But it’s not regulators that are making them do so. Shareholders are.
So it’s no wonder that you generally don’t hear this sort of reasoning from, say, credit unions, which are subject to the same rules but don’t ultimately answer to the same master.
It is true that many more banks (and some credit unions, too, no doubt) will add monthly fees to their checking accounts, especially now that bigger institutions like Chase and Bank of America have given them cover.
But they won’t all do so. In fact, ING Direct, the online banking colossus, wasted no time last week in sending out gleeful notes reminding the world that it has always offered free checking in an interest-bearing account and will continue to do so.
Finally, Chase worries about those who will abandon its checking accounts in the wake of its price increase. And by fretting that those people will end up “unbanked,” it invokes the bogeyman — the rapacious check casher standing behind bulletproof glass in a grimy strip mall somewhere hard by the liquor store.
I sincerely doubt, however, that many former bank customers, having tasted the good life with a debit card and nice people on the phone who can help when the card isn’t working, will turn to check-cashing enterprises if they get fed up with monthly bank fees.
In fact, there is an entire niche of the card industry that has quietly grown up to serve them in recent years. Known variously as “prepaid” or “reloadable” cards, this is plastic that has a Visa or MasterCard logo and works a lot like a debit card. You can use it in a store or to buy something on Amazon.com or to reserve a rental car.
The difference is you don’t get the card at a bank. Instead, a company like Green Dot offers it online and sells it on a rack in various stores next to the gift card displays. In fact, Green Dot has about 3.3 million active accounts, many of which it has issued with Wal-Mart under the “Walmart MoneyCard” brand. Cardholders in the Green Dot system had loaded about $10 billion onto the cards as of Sept. 30, 2010.
This is not a free service, though it can come pretty close. With the Green Dot-branded card, it’s free to buy and activate the card online, though it can cost up to $4.95 if you do it in person (the Wal-Mart card pricing is slightly different).
Then, there’s the $5.95 monthly fee, but the company waives it if you make 30 purchases or more or load $1,000 or more onto it in a month. Also, there’s a $2.50 A.T.M. fee for people who don’t use machines that are part of Green Dot’s partner network. The money does not earn interest after consumers load it onto the card.
Direct deposit is possible, as is online bill paying, and the funds are insured by the F.D.I.C., which makes the product an awful lot like an online bank. There are no overdraft fees, though. Green Dot simply doesn’t put the transaction through if it determines that you don’t have enough money to cover it.
Green Dot takes in about $5 a month per cardholder in user fees. For consumers doing comparison shopping who don’t mind losing access to a teller and paper checks, that makes it competitive with old-fashioned banks that are now charging $8 and up for customers who don’t maintain minimum balance levels or have the right relationships with the bank.
Regulators could subject Green Dot to more scrutiny at some point. Meanwhile, the federal government is partnering with the company on a pilot program to deposit income tax refunds directly onto prepaid cards.
That said, prepaid card customers who don’t know any better can easily end up in the wrong hands. Last year, the Kardashian sisters, famous mostly for dating other famous people and humiliating themselves on television, invited further embarrassment when the Connecticut attorney general questioned the legality of a prepaid “kard” marketed with their name on it. In the face of criticism over high fees, they got themselves out of the deal.
So there is risk for consumers who turn their backs on the banks and their new fees. But most people won’t, and the banks know this. Changing checking accounts is a pain. Convenience matters, too, for people who need to deposit cash or have other reasons to lean heavily on a branch.
Those who do make the change can switch to a credit union or the ING Directs of the world. And as more people see Green Dot’s commercials, they’ll realize there are other alternatives that can be cheaper if they’re careful with the products.
Meanwhile, Green Dot’s founder and chief executive, Steve Streit, says that he’s reasonably certain that major banks are quietly planning to introduce their own reloadable prepaid cards.
Perhaps he’s a bit paranoid. But you can bet that if his company gets big enough, plenty of big banks will mimic his product. After all, once they do have similar cards, they’ll have a convenient place to dump checking account customers who are no longer profitable enough to make the shareholders happy.

When banks raise your fees - pull your damn money OUT of them and tell them to f#ck off ... it's YOUR money

January 14, 2011

As Banks Raise Fees, You Have Options

So now we know what the big banks’ New Year’s resolution was: Keep the profits flowing from basic checking accounts.
Earlier this month, Bank of America announced its intent to test a number of different monthly fees for customers in some states, depending on the balance in their accounts or other relationships with the institution.
Right before the new year, meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase informed customers that under certain circumstances it would add monthly fees to many of the accounts it inherited from the now-deceased Washington Mutual.
This must feel awfully good for the veteran branch banking executives at Chase who looked stingy by comparison when WaMu ran ads all over the United States in the 1990s and 2000s telling consumers that free checking was a basic human right.
But Chase sure doesn’t sound happy. In a remarkable display of staying on message, it gave the same comment last week when The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money and the trade publication US Banker asked it to explain the reasoning for the new monthly fees.
“We don’t want to raise fees on our customers,” a company spokesman said. “But unfortunately, regulation is forcing us to do it. And as a result, some customers may end up unbanked.”
This statement is striking for a number of reasons, and the eye-popping earnings the bank announced on Friday don’t exactly make the company more worthy of sympathy. So I’ve spent the last week trying to figure out why I was so sure I did not believe it the instant I read it.
So let’s take it apart, shall we?
First of all, Chase does want to raise fees on customers. It’s not the only bank that wants to, and this is a fine thing if you are a shareholder. After all, any business ought to strive to produce a product or offer a service that is so good or necessary that customers will keep on using it even after a price increase.
What companies don’t want to do is raise fees so much that they attract the attention of regulators or people who do what I do for a living. Yet this is exactly what the banks have done in the last decade.
First, they raised overdraft fees until the fees were often many times higher than the amount of the actual transaction that pushed the account balance below zero. At the same time, the banks and their partners at Visa and MasterCard forced merchants to pay ever more for the privilege of accepting these cards.
Eventually, consumers and merchants howled loud enough in protest that we ended up with overdraft fee regulation. There is also a Federal Reserve proposal percolating that may allow merchants to pay big banks much less when they accept those banks’ debit cards.
And so we arrive at Part 2 of Chase’s statement: regulators are making the bank raise prices. Um, no. Regulators are making it lower prices, or at least make fees more transparent.
All actors in this play do have the ability to improvise. And some of the big banks relied heavily on overdraft fees to hit whatever internal goals they set for themselves in their branch banking units. Chase, for instance, estimated that the overdraft legislation would cost it about $700 million a year. It’s also worried sick about the possibility of earning much less from merchant fees.
Chase and similar banks have to make that up somehow. But it’s not regulators that are making them do so. Shareholders are.
So it’s no wonder that you generally don’t hear this sort of reasoning from, say, credit unions, which are subject to the same rules but don’t ultimately answer to the same master.
It is true that many more banks (and some credit unions, too, no doubt) will add monthly fees to their checking accounts, especially now that bigger institutions like Chase and Bank of America have given them cover.
But they won’t all do so. In fact, ING Direct, the online banking colossus, wasted no time last week in sending out gleeful notes reminding the world that it has always offered free checking in an interest-bearing account and will continue to do so.
Finally, Chase worries about those who will abandon its checking accounts in the wake of its price increase. And by fretting that those people will end up “unbanked,” it invokes the bogeyman — the rapacious check casher standing behind bulletproof glass in a grimy strip mall somewhere hard by the liquor store.
I sincerely doubt, however, that many former bank customers, having tasted the good life with a debit card and nice people on the phone who can help when the card isn’t working, will turn to check-cashing enterprises if they get fed up with monthly bank fees.
In fact, there is an entire niche of the card industry that has quietly grown up to serve them in recent years. Known variously as “prepaid” or “reloadable” cards, this is plastic that has a Visa or MasterCard logo and works a lot like a debit card. You can use it in a store or to buy something on Amazon.com or to reserve a rental car.
The difference is you don’t get the card at a bank. Instead, a company like Green Dot offers it online and sells it on a rack in various stores next to the gift card displays. In fact, Green Dot has about 3.3 million active accounts, many of which it has issued with Wal-Mart under the “Walmart MoneyCard” brand. Cardholders in the Green Dot system had loaded about $10 billion onto the cards as of Sept. 30, 2010.
This is not a free service, though it can come pretty close. With the Green Dot-branded card, it’s free to buy and activate the card online, though it can cost up to $4.95 if you do it in person (the Wal-Mart card pricing is slightly different).
Then, there’s the $5.95 monthly fee, but the company waives it if you make 30 purchases or more or load $1,000 or more onto it in a month. Also, there’s a $2.50 A.T.M. fee for people who don’t use machines that are part of Green Dot’s partner network. The money does not earn interest after consumers load it onto the card.
Direct deposit is possible, as is online bill paying, and the funds are insured by the F.D.I.C., which makes the product an awful lot like an online bank. There are no overdraft fees, though. Green Dot simply doesn’t put the transaction through if it determines that you don’t have enough money to cover it.
Green Dot takes in about $5 a month per cardholder in user fees. For consumers doing comparison shopping who don’t mind losing access to a teller and paper checks, that makes it competitive with old-fashioned banks that are now charging $8 and up for customers who don’t maintain minimum balance levels or have the right relationships with the bank.
Regulators could subject Green Dot to more scrutiny at some point. Meanwhile, the federal government is partnering with the company on a pilot program to deposit income tax refunds directly onto prepaid cards.
That said, prepaid card customers who don’t know any better can easily end up in the wrong hands. Last year, the Kardashian sisters, famous mostly for dating other famous people and humiliating themselves on television, invited further embarrassment when the Connecticut attorney general questioned the legality of a prepaid “kard” marketed with their name on it. In the face of criticism over high fees, they got themselves out of the deal.
So there is risk for consumers who turn their backs on the banks and their new fees. But most people won’t, and the banks know this. Changing checking accounts is a pain. Convenience matters, too, for people who need to deposit cash or have other reasons to lean heavily on a branch.
Those who do make the change can switch to a credit union or the ING Directs of the world. And as more people see Green Dot’s commercials, they’ll realize there are other alternatives that can be cheaper if they’re careful with the products.
Meanwhile, Green Dot’s founder and chief executive, Steve Streit, says that he’s reasonably certain that major banks are quietly planning to introduce their own reloadable prepaid cards.
Perhaps he’s a bit paranoid. But you can bet that if his company gets big enough, plenty of big banks will mimic his product. After all, once they do have similar cards, they’ll have a convenient place to dump checking account customers who are no longer profitable enough to make the shareholders happy.

That which is not reckoned with, which is shunted into the hidey holes of one's nation's history - will rise again like syphlitic scabs to infect the whole body politic

01/14/2011 03:45 PM

Nazi Death Marches

Book Details German Citizens' Role in End of War Killings 

By Jan Friedmann
More than 250,000 concentration camp prisoners died in death marches shortly before the end of World War II. Many of them were murdered by German civilians. A new book tries to answer the question why.
The end was in sight, with Allied troops already on the outskirts of the city. Nevertheless, a number of citizens of Celle in north-central Germany became murderers on April 8, 1945.
They participated in the hunt for hundreds of concentration camp prisoners who, during an American bombing attack on the city and its train station, had fled from the freight cars, some of them in flames, in which they were being transported. Local police officers, guards and members of the Volkssturm national militia and the Hitler Youth executed their victims in a nearby forest.
The prisoners were "killed like animals," many of them execution style, according to a British military report. Up to 300 people died in the massacre, with the leader of a Hitler Youth group in Celle killing more than 20 alone. The Allies captured the city four days later.
The outbreak of violence in this part of the state of Lower Saxony is described in detail in a book by Daniel Blatman, "The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide," which comes out in German translation this week. The book addresses the broader issue of the death marches of concentration camp prisoners in 1944 and 1945, during the waning months of the war.
Lives Filled with Suffering
Blatman, a historian at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, comes to an unsettling conclusion about the last phase of the Nazi mass murders: "The more the war approached its end, and the more obvious the prisoners' presence in the midst of the German population became, the more regularly German civilians participated."
Those civilians included government and local officials, members of the Nazi Party and the Hitler Youth, as well as local residents. They abused or killed large numbers of those who, in the last stage of their lives filled with suffering, were forced on marches or had spent days being transported across Germany in overfilled freight cars.
At least 250,000 former prisoners lost their lives on death marches between January and May 1945. Their graves line roads in parts of Lower Saxony, Bavaria and Mecklenburg, and in almost all of the places where the Nazis had built their camps.
The death marches began in occupied Poland, where the SS emptied out the larger camps in places like Majdanek, Gross-Rosen and Auschwitz as the front approached. Many prisoners were not even given enough time to pack their few belongings. Often clothed in nothing but rags and wearing wooden shoes, they staggered across the overcrowded roads in the bitter cold.
Attacking the Weakest
The prisoners were forced to share the roads with retreating German soldiers and civilians fleeing from the Red Army. All too often, the fears of the panicked masses erupted into violence against the weakest of those with whom they shared the route.
The tone was set by the SS, whose guards murdered without restraint. In Palmnicken, for example, 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the former East Prussian city of Königsberg (today's Kaliningrad), the henchmen drove more than 3,000 prisoners from the Stutthof camp, who had been marching for days, onto the beach of the frozen Baltic Sea and mowed them down with their machine guns.
A few weeks later, the death marches led directly through the territory of the German Reich. In one case, prisoners from the Hessental camp near Schwäbisch Hall in southwestern Germany were forced to march eastward toward Bavaria. After the war, investigators with the French occupation force unearthed mass graves in several locations along the route. They found 17 bodies in Sulzdorf, 36 in Ellwangen and 42 in a village called Zöbingen. Death marches that began at the Dachau concentration camp passed through Poing near Munich and continued through Wolfratshausen and Bad Tölz. Groups of prisoners from the Flossenbürg camp crisscrossed Bavaria.
The number of perpetrators continued to grow. Historian Blatman estimates that thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, of ordinary citizens became accomplices of the murderous regime near the end of the war. In the northern city of LĂĽneburg, for example, a scenario similar to what had happened in Celle unfolded on April 11, 1945, when civilians and police officers captured prisoners who had escaped from a train that had been bombed. Members of the German navy later shot the prisoners at the LĂĽneburg train station.
Merciless Sadists
There is no historical evidence that anyone at the very top, such as Hitler or SS chief Heinrich Himmler, gave the orders to liquidate the camps. The last weeks of the war were characterized by a gradual breakdown of administrative order. The jurisdiction over the groups of prisoners being forced to march around the country changed in rapid succession, and many local officials acted on their own authority when deciding what to do with the prisoners.
But why did so many officials behave with such brutality, and why did ordinary civilians become involved, when it was already clear that the Nazis' "final victory" was a fantasy?
To answer this question, Blatman cites the example of the guards, a group of people who had become merciless sadists over the years. The concentration camp guards saw themselves as frontline soldiers against the enemy within, and as defenders of the Aryan race and the superior nation. Now that they were no longer working in the camps, they continued their mission, except that they were relieved of their prescribed routines. Worried about being caught by the Allied soldiers in the company of bands of walking skeletons, they chose to kill the potential witnesses instead.
Similar motives also turned many people on the home front into prepetrators when the trains filled with prisoners suddenly arrived in their towns. Mayors, local party officials and men with the Volkssturm militia were determined to prevent the oppressed concentration camp inmates from gaining their freedom in their own backyards and exacting revenge for the injustices they had suffered. This logic led them to believe that they were protecting the welfare and safety of their fellow citizens by killing the strangers in their striped prison uniforms.
Zebra Hunting
A decade of indoctrination, or what Blatman calls a "genocidal mentality" that had systematically dehumanized the Jews and the Slavs, led to the collective hunt. Adolescent members of the Hitler Youth often reached for their guns as a matter of course.
Of course, there were also farmers who handed bread or potatoes to the starving prisoners or concealed them. There are also accounts of cases in which prominent local residents, including a lower-level Nazi official and a respected attorney in Burgstall in the Altmark region of eastern Germany, rescued larger groups.
But many of the marches ended in disaster, as was the case in Gardelegen, a town in east-central Germany, where US soldiers found hundreds of charred and mangled bodies in a barn in mid-April 1945. They were the bodies of prisoners from various camps who had been forced inside.
It was later discovered that people had volunteered to guard the prisoners, "including ordinary civilians, some of them armed with hunting rifles, who mutated into prison guards of their own volition," Blatman writes. The massacres began when the prisoners were being marched to an empty cavalry school in Gardelegen, where they were housed temporarily, and where adolescents boasted: "We're going hunting, to shoot down the zebras."
'Responsibility of the Entire German People'
Men from the Volkssturm militia, police officers, soldiers from a paratrooper division barracked nearby, guards and civilians helped drive the doomed prisoners into the barn. Then they locked the doors, lit gasoline-soaked straw on the ground and tossed hand grenades into the building. Anyone who attempted to escape the inferno ran into a hail of bullets. Some 25 prisoners survived, while about 1,000 died.
A few days later, the victims were given a burial with military honors. The Americans ordered the residents of Gardelegen to attend the ceremony.
"Some will say that the Nazis were responsible for this crime," Colonel George P. Lynch, chief of staff of the 102nd US Infantry Division, told the Germans. "Others will point to the Gestapo. The responsibility rests with neither. It is the responsibility of the entire German people."
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

But when it comes to petro, you will cut a deal with the devil, and licked the cloven feet of them that's got it - the black gold

01/14/2011 03:03 PM

A Lifeline for Nabucco?

EU Cuts New Gas Deal with Azerbaijan

The European Union on Thursday signed a major gas deal with Azerbaijan, part of the bloc's efforts to wean itself from dependency on energy from Russia. Many hope the deal will save the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline project -- but Azerbaijan holds the trump card.
Many would argue that Europe is doing things backwards. In its eagerness to free itself from reliance on Russian natural gas, the continent is preparing to pour $10.5 billion into the construction of a southern pipeline leading from the Caspian Sea region through Turkey to south-eastern Europe.
So far, though, the European Union has struggled to line up potential suppliers. With several other pipelines taking shape in the so-called Southern Corridor, competition is fierce -- and there is concern that the EU's Nabucco pipeline could operate far below its capacity of 31 billion cubic meters per year, even if it opens on schedule in 2015.
This week European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Energy Commissioner GĂĽnther Oettinger are in the region to ward off that disappointment. And on Thursday they secured a deal which could help make Nabucco a reality.
The deal signed Thursday between the EU and Azerbaijan is for "substantial volumes of gas" from the Caspian country's Shah Deniz II gas field. While specifics were not made public, the Azerbaijanis promised that the volume would be sufficient to make the Southern Corridor a viable route.
A Hitch
"This is a major breakthrough," Barosso said in a statement. "This new supply route will enhance the energy security of European consumers and businesses."
But there is a hitch. Azerbaijan has not yet decided which of the several competing pipeline plans meant for the Southern Corridor will receive the lucrative contract. In addition to Nabucco, there are two smaller pipelines in the works, including the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) and the ITGI pipeline, both of which would use existing lines in Turkey before transporting gas onward to Italy. Nabucco would route supplies through Bulgaria and Romania. In early December, Azerbaijan reached an agreement with Italy, Greece and Turkey -- on the ITGI pipeline.
Russian gas giant Gazprom is also planning a "South Stream" pipeline, which would carry Russian gas along much the same route as Nabucco. Gazprom has been careful not to portray South Stream as a competitor to Nabucco, with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller telling SPIEGEL earlier this month, "If the Europeans want a Nabucco pipeline, they should build it. We have nothing against the idea. Nabucco is their problem. Our job is to deliver our gas to our customers as stipulated in our contracts."
'Not Really Groundbreaking'
The EU has in recent years heavily touted the Nabucco project, which includes the German energy giant RWE among its backers. The 3,000-kilometer line would also run through Turkey on the way to its endpoint in Austria; it would add to capacity already in place in Turkey.
The European Union hopes Azerbaijan will make a decision by March, when a package of €200 million in EU support is set to expire in the absence of investor interest. On Thursday, Energy Commission spokeswoman Marlene Holzner appeared to soft-pedal EU support for Nabucco, telling the Associated Press only that "for the EU, it is decisive that a European project and a European firm gets awarded this contract." Both TAP and ITGI have European backers.
On Friday, Barroso and Oettinger were scheduled to continue on to Turkmenistan in their search for gas. But analysts were playing down Thursday's deal. Alexandros Petersen, a Eurasia expert at the Atlantic Council in Washington, told the AP the agreement "is not really groundbreaking. The real story is what project of the Southern Corridor the Azerbaijanis are going to pick."
cgh -- with wire reports

Danish sailors taken prisoner by pirates

NATO: Pirates kidnap Danish sailors

Pirates have kidnapped the crew of The Leopard in the Gulf of Aden

Six crewmembers of the Danish cargo vessel The Leopard – two Danes and four Filipinos – have been kidnapped by pirates in the Gulf of Aden, NATO has confirmed to Politiken.
A Turkish naval vessel was dispatched to the Leopard, which radioed at 2 p.m. on Wednesday that it was under attack, but on arrival the vessel was empty.
“When we were told that the Leopard had been attacked, The Gaziantep steamed to the area and when they got close sent out a helicopter to investigate. We were told that the crew had gone into a safe room, but we were unable to contact them,” said NATO Chief Anti-piracy Spokesperson Lt. Comm. Jacqui Sheriff.
Failing contact from the helicopter and with no signs of life on the vessel, a Turkish boarding party was sent aboard.
"There was no-one on board, the crew had been taken hostage by pirates,” Sheriff said.
It remains uncertain what the Leopard’s cargo was. The Leopard is owned by the Danish Shipcraft company. Headquartered north of Copenhagen, the company specialises in carrying weapons, nuclear and dangerous cargoes.

Sure fire "cure" for holding onto the disease

12/22/2010 01:07 PM

Top Economists Debate the Crisis

'Clinging to the Euro Will Only Prolong the Agony'

Leading German economists Peter Bofinger and Stefan Homburg are split over the euro's chances of survival. In a discussion moderated by SPIEGEL, they talked about the wisdom of introducing a euro bond and what would happen if Germany left the common currency.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Bofinger, Mr. Homburg, can the euro be saved?
Stefan Homburg: In 1995, the great thinker and European policy expert Ralf Dahrendorf predicted that the euro would divide rather than unite the continent. At the moment, we are experiencing the beginning of this process. Political tensions are growing in Europe, and the Germans are being viewed as taskmasters. For these reasons, it would be better to bring down the curtain on the euro and return to the deutsche mark.
Peter Bofinger: That would be irresponsible. The euro has been a model of success. It is essential that we preserve it. The only problem is that the steps taken so far haven't sufficed. What we need now is a bold step toward more economic integration.
SPIEGEL: What do you have in mind?
Bofinger: We should seize upon the proposal of Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker and introduce common bonds for the euro zone. Such euro bonds would significantly reduce the interest costs for problem countries, such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal. These countries would then have an easier time putting their government finances in order with austerity measures.
Homburg: I doubt that. Euro bonds violate the Maastricht Treaty, which stipulates that no country can be held liable for another country in the euro zone. The euro bonds would even elevate liability to the level of a principle and force Germany to vouch for the debts of other countries whose fiscal behavior we cannot control. Our population would not tolerate the tax increases and reductions in transfer payments that this would necessitate.
Bofinger: Yes, they would. We would just have to explain to them that this is the only way to preserve the euro. This will not succeed with the current bailout funds. They are not sufficient for anything more than Greece, Ireland and Portugal, and possibly Spain. But they would not be enough if a country like Italy joined the fold.
Homburg: Are you seriously suggesting that Germany should leap in to help if Italy stops servicing its debts?
Bofinger: Absolutely. If Italy falls, so do billions upon billions that German banks and insurance companies hold in the form of Italian bonds. The consequence would be a massive financial crash -- a risk that no government can take. That's why we have no choice; we have to stabilize the system.
Homburg: Pardon me, but that's nothing but scaremongering. Throughout history, there have been hundreds of government bankruptcies. Look at Argentina and Russia, for example. But in none of these cases did the entire financial system collapse. Of course, the financial industry likes being able to collect hefty risk premiums without risk. But, it can't be right for Germany's taxpayers to prop up the banking sector under the guise of saving countries or the euro.
Bofinger: I completely agree with you. If it were somehow possible to isolate the effects of a bank's failure, it would be better for us to simply allow all the banks that speculated recklessly to go under. The only problem is that, unfortunately, we can't isolate the effects. Today's banks are too big and too interconnected for that. Besides, they have no equity reserves for government bonds. The financial crisis has taught us that the markets have a tendency toward uncontrollable chain reactions.
SPIEGEL: Are you saying that the euro crisis could develop into a new Lehman case?
Bofinger: The Lehman bankruptcy would look like a drop in the ocean compared to what we would see if a country in the euro zone were to go bankrupt.
Homburg: I see things completely differently. The cause of the euro crisis is not to be found in the irrationality of the financial markets. Rather, it lies in the fact that certain countries lived beyond their means. A Greek train driver earns a monthly net salary of €5,000 ($6,600), and Spanish air traffic controllers make up to €300,000 a year. Do you really want to ask German workers, who haven't seen wage increases in a long time, to pay for incomes like that with even higher taxes?
Bofinger: Now, hold on a minute. In Spain and Ireland, it was the private sector, not the government, that lived beyond its means. In 2007, the Irish government had a balanced budget, and the Spanish government even had a surplus. The financial sector, on the other hand, issued loans that made no sense at all for years. The damage is considerable, but it could be contained if Europe would introduce euro bonds. After all, a euro bond is not a transfer union.
Homburg: What else could it be? Economists have made reliable calculations showing that the interest rate on a euro bond would be about a percentage point higher than the rate on a German government bond. Each year, this would cost the (German) government about €20 billion more, which would be the equivalent of a 2 percent hike in the value-added tax.
Bofinger: I would contest the assertion that the interest rate on a euro bond would be higher than that on a German government bond. Indeed, the current problem is precisely that risks associated with the euro countries are evaluated separately. If, on the other hand, they had a united presence on the financial market, the risk of a bankruptcy would be low, and the risk premiums would disappear. US Treasury bonds would be the most important competitors. Since total new borrowing for the euro zone is substantially lower than that of the United States, the euro bond would be an attractive instrument at the international level. And that's particularly the case since the market for euro bonds would be much bigger than the market for German government bonds.
Homburg: Euro bonds would not be as safe as German government bonds. And since they would stimulate even heavier borrowing, they would have to yield higher rates. In the wake of the current bailout measures, the German government has already burdened taxpayers with risks worth €200 billion. Likewise, over the last year, risk premiums for German government bonds have doubled. There simply isn't any more room for maneuver.
Bofinger: If you stir together eggs, water and flour, you don't get 50 percent flour, 25 percent water and 25 percent eggs. Rather, you get dough for egg noodles. You create something new -- and the same would apply to the euro bond.
Homburg: You're living in a dream world. Euro bonds create a system in which countries assume joint liability -- and at Germany's expense. The European Central Bank (ECB) has already asked (euro-zone) member states for a capital infusion because, since the crisis began, it has bought up close to €75 billion in troubled government bonds. And who is paying the lion's share? Germany. For the time being, the shell game being played by politicians and the ECB is still working. But things will get worse when Greece and others can no longer service their debts. Then we'll have to guarantee amounts that no one could even imagine today. And, in Germany, it would necessitate massive cuts.
Bofinger: Things won't reach that point if the proposal is correctly implemented. After all, it doesn't just call for new bonds; it also calls for more power for the European Commission in Brussels. Under the proposal, in the future, it would be up to the European Commission to ensure that all member states are pursuing sound fiscal policies. It's very simple: Whoever violates the criteria of the Stability Pact will not be allowed to issue any more euro bonds.
SPIEGEL: Let's assume that the system is introduced in the form that Mr. Bofinger suggests. Would that be the solution, Mr. Homburg?
Homburg: No. The Stability Pact hasn't worked, and it never will. The German government has massively failed in all its efforts to bolster the Stability Pact.
Bofinger: It's a question of negotiating skill. I'm convinced that, if the German government were willing to allow the introduction of euro bonds, it could impose conditions on the other countries. In effect, it would be saying: "We'll give the euro another chance, but only if our partners commit themselves to stricter fiscal discipline."
Homburg: Clinging to the euro will only draw out the agony. I argue in favor of making a painful break -- that is, putting an end to this monetary experiment. It would calm thing down in Europe and, on balance, the continent would be better off.
'We'll Wake Up One Morning to Hear We Have a New Currency'
SPIEGEL: In other words, you are proposing that Germany should withdraw from the euro zone. The only question is whether we can handle the economic consequences.
Homburg: Technically speaking, getting out of the euro is just as easy as getting into it was a few years back. But there will hardly be any forewarning about such a withdrawal. Instead, we'll just wake up one morning to hear on the radio that we have a new currency.
Bofinger: The way you want to help the Germans get their beloved deutsche mark back overnight sounds downright idyllic. But, the fact is, it would not be dreamy at all; it would be a nightmare. If the Germans withdraw from the euro, the value of their assets in other EU countries would suddenly decline. This could lead some institutions to the brink of collapse, particularly banks and insurance companies. What's more, we would see a flight of capital into the new deutsche mark that would eclipse anything we have experienced so far.
Homburg: Hold on a minute. What you call capital flight -- that is, the regrouping of Greek or Irish government bonds into German or French government bonds -- has been going on for a long time. These are normal movements within the capital markets.
Bofinger: But the return of the deutsche mark would add momentum to the process. Our currency would suddenly appreciate by 30 or 40 percent. It would be a fatal blow to German exporters because prices for their products would rise by the same amount in key foreign markets. We experienced a similar situation in the mid-1990s, when the deutsche mark appreciated considerably against the British pound, the lira and the franc. It took the German economy more than a decade to recover from that blow.
Homburg: The difficulties in the mid-1990s had their roots in the effects of reunification and not in the exchange rate. It's true that the deutsche mark would appreciate somewhat, but not by nearly as much as you suggest. On the other hand, our consumers would benefit from the corresponding increase in purchasing power. This is precisely what you were proposing for years. Scaring people is unfair because a transfer union -- which would only collapse in the end -- is far more dangerous, economically and politically, than a return to the deutsche mark.
Bofinger: Only at first glance. If we abandon the euro, we will soon be funding other regions of the world instead of our partner countries.
SPIEGEL: You'll have to explain that to us.
Bofinger: Just look at how much money other countries spend to keep their exchange rates relatively stable against the dollar and other currencies. The Japanese have bought foreign government bonds worth $1 trillion. And Chinese banks have bonds worth $2.6 trillion in their vaults. This is several times as much as the Germans have so far spent to keep Europe together. Is it really better to buy US bonds instead of Spanish ones?
Homburg: Objection. Were things really that bad for us 10 years ago, when the deutsche mark still existed? All of these nightmare scenarios you're painting here are really unfounded. Objectively speaking, over the last decade, an enormous amount of capital has flowed out of Germany and into other European countries. This current would be reversed if there were a return to the deutsche mark, and more money would be invested in Germany again.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Bofinger, your colleague is saying that Germany is practically doing the concept of a unified Europe a favor by withdrawing from the euro. Do you agree?
Bofinger: Not at all. If Germany were to leave the euro, it would set Europe back by decades. Once again, the continent would be viewed as an amalgamation of small countries rather than a strong economic zone that can pit itself economically against the United States and the emerging Asian economies.
SPIEGEL: So far, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a conservative approach toward the euro crisis. Though she wants to preserve the euro, she still opposes euro bonds. How would you rate her management of the crisis so far?
Bofinger: The German government has been far too cautious and far too focused on the details. In all of its efforts, it has consistently hoped that things wouldn't really get so bad. But, in the long run, the individual actions that have been taken so far will not suffice.
Homburg: I agree with you completely. The German government has allowed itself to be driven by events and has consistently said no at first, only to relent in the end. It was like that in the case of Greece, with the so-called "euro rescue fund," as well as in the more recent case of Ireland. This aimless muddling has only succeeded in further unsettling the financial markets.
SPIEGEL: That sounds rather grim. Was the monetary union a mistake from the very beginning?
Bofinger: No. The monetary union makes sense, both economically and politically. And we have benefited from the common currency. Without the euro, Germany would have come to resemble Japan, suffering from weak growth and always teetering on the edge of deflation. Like Japan, in order to re-establish competitiveness, we would have had to respond to every devaluation of the dollar with wage freezes. Thanks to the euro, we avoided that. And that's why it's worth doing everything we can to preserve it.
Homburg: Every economist will agree that unified currencies offer theoretical benefits, such as enlarging markets and reducing costs. But, in practical terms, the euro experiment has failed. I think the European Union is a good thing, and I don't want to jeopardize it by desperately clinging to a failed currency experiment. But that's exactly what politicians are doing.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Bofinger, Mr. Homburg, how much longer do you give the euro?
Homburg: Less than 10 years.
Bofinger: If it makes it through the next two years, it stands a good chance of survival.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Bofinger, Mr. Homburg, thank you for this interview.
Interview conducted by Christian Reiermann and Michael Sauga